Martian chess players

Hector Avalos tried to leave some belated comments on my old “Conflicted atheism” post. I’ll respond here.

Dr. Hector Avalos6/02/2013 3:05 AM

Yes, God can still be the source of your standards like invisible Martians can be the source of your standards or like Zeus can be the source of your standards. Or Krishna could be the source of your standards even if you thought Yahweh was the source.

Merely listing or postulating possible supernatural sources tells us nothing about the source of your standards because they can be cancelled out by opposite propositions that are equally possible.

That’s an argument from analogy minus the argument. Avalos needs to show that claims about Zeus, Krishna, Martians, and Yahweh are equivalent. All we have is his stipulative comparison. 

It is just as possible that YOU are the source of your standards without violating anything you are calling the ontology of ethics.  Nothing about the ontology of ethics demands that a source be supernatural.

Objective moral norms demand a supernatural source–for reasons I’ve given elsewhere.

The point remains that, regardless of the source, once YOU MAKE A DECISION (presuming you believe in free will), then YOU do become the source of your standards for all practical purposes. And so you DO become a moral relativist just as is anyone else who chooses what the standard will be regardless of it origin.

Really? If Einstein uses Riemannian geometry to formulate the theory of relativity, Einstein becomes the source of Riemannian geometry? 

And if you ever justify your standards because of the source, it is still YOU who is justifying that justification.

How does that reduce to relativism? 

Actually, it is not that easy to distinguish what Ettore Maserati intended in any particular car from what his brothers or company engineers intended. Ettore may not have designed every item in a car that bears his surname. For example, he may have used a part that was designed by someone else.

If you read about the famous Type V4 Maserati engine, you will see that  The V4 (V stood for the cylinder formation and its 4 litre capacity) engine was projected by Alfieri Maserati and designed by Piero Visentini  (http://www.maserati-alfieri.co.uk/menotti11.htm)

More importantly, there is difference between entities whose existence can be empirically verified, and those whose existence cannot be empirically verified.

Other issues to one side, this confuses empirical agents with their intentions. Even if the agent is an empirical object, it hardly follows that his intentions are empirical objects. 

We can determine the purposes of human actors if we have enough information about how their plans matched the results. Presumably, we might have sketches of cars, for example, that then became reality. We can verify that human actors do have plans that are executed.

i) Although Ettore Maserati used to be an empirical agent, he’s been dead a long time.

ii) Does Avalos really think you have to compare sketches of cars with the results to infer design intentions? What if we had no independent knowledge of the designer? What if all we had to work with was the end-product: the sports car. Is Avalos suggesting that we can never reason back from the results to the intentions of the engineer? If I examine a Maserati, I can’t infer that this was designed to be a sports car rather than orange juicer? 

But, with God, you have a double problem. You are determining the intention of an entity whose existence cannot be verified in the same manner as that of Maserati.

Avalos is changing the subject. He originally alleged that my appeal was “circular.” Now he’s shifted the issue to verification. That’s a backdoor admission that his original objection failed.

People of different religions and philosophial orientations can verify the existence of Maserati using simple empirical tools that are not dependent on religious presuppositions.

i) Once again, Avalos is shifting the issue from identifying intentions to verifying the existence of the agent. Those are distinct issues.

ii) It’s unnecessary to directly verify the existence of an engineer. The car didn’t very well design itself. You can indirectly infer the existence of the engineer from the car.

In addition, Maserati is finite being with finite attributes that can be detected by human beings. But determining God’s purposes is not the same. He is said to have infinite attributes that I, as a finite being, cannot verify. I have no information about his purposes that I can verify.

i) I don’t know where Avalos comes up with the claim that God is said to have infinite attributes. Who says that? At most, God is said to have the attribute of infinity. Having infinite attributes and having an attribute of infinity are not convertible propositions.

ii) In addition, it’s a question of how divine infinity is defined in systematic theology. Usually it’s taken to mean that God is unconditioned by space and time.

Avalos seems to be using “infinite” in a quantitative sense, but Christian theology doesn’t predicate an infinite number of attributes to God. So Hector’s claim is ignorant.

iii) But let’s play along with infinity for the sake of argument. Is Avalos claiming that we can have no knowledge of infinitely complex objects? What about the Mandelbrot set (to take one example)? Is that unverifiable? Is that unknowable? 

So, no, I am afraid your analogy between determining the purposes of an infinite being, whose existence is questionable in the first place, is not the same as determining the purposes of a finite being whose existence and activities can be empirically verified.

My statement refers to my inability to verify your claim with my five senses and/or logic, which are the instruments I normally use in my every day life to verify the reality of claims.

i) What about reality claims involving abstract objects? These are not empirically verifiable. Yet they may be explanatorily indispensable.

Likewise, I can’t empirically verify my own mental states. Does that mean the existence of my mental states is questionable?

ii) Avalos appeals to logic, yet hasn’t he condemned subjective appeals as circular and relativistic? After all, it is Avalos who is using logic. 

I am assuming that Steve, you, and I agree that our five senses and/or logic can give reliable data.

As a Christian, I think the five senses are generally reliable because God designed them. If I were an atheist, if my brain and senses were the outcome of a mindless, hit-and-miss process, then my brain and senses would not be trustworthy. 

So, yes, any statement about your god (or whatever you call God) is unverifiable because I cannot verify it my five senses an/or logic and not because I simply say so.

So, it is no more circular than saying that I cannot verify that undetectable Martians are playing chess right now.

Suppose the first space probe to Mars discovered a chess set on Mars. Suppose the probe was unable to detect the presence or prior existence of Martians. Even so, would we not be able to infer intelligent life from the alien chess set? 

If I am wrong, then simply show me a way to verify those claims about God with our fives senses and/or logic.

There are both a priori and a posteriori theistic proofs. Likewise, you have the argument from prophecy. I could say more, but that’s a start.